In a Carrier Sense Multiple Access/Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA) wireless communication system or network, such as an IEEE 802.11 wireless local area network, co-channel frame collisions are inevitable. To maximize throughput the receiver needs to successfully decode one of the frames in the collision.
Mechanisms exist to maximize the probability of successfully decoding one of the frames involved in the collision. One method is a so-called “stomp-and-restart” mechanism in which if, after a receiver has acquired a frame (start-of-packet or “SOP”) and begins decoding the data, a subsequent stronger frame is received. The receiver will abort decoding the first frame and re-acquire on the second frame. If the signal strength of the second frame is much larger than that of the first frame, the second frame is likely to be successfully decoded. It is often the case however that the second frame is not substantially stronger than the first frame, in which case both frames are lost.